5 Startups Poised to Change MedTech Forever (Ekso Bionics)

Ekso Bionics is giving new meaning to the term "wearable technology" that has created a big splash in recent years in trade shows like the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show.

Founded in 2005, the Richmond, California company makes the Ekso Bionic suit that helps paraplegics and others with a broad range of lower extremity weakness and paralysis walk again. More specifically, the product is an exoskeleton training suit.

Ekso has made tremendous strides, pun intended. In December, 2012, the company recorded a video showing more than 1 million steps having being taken cumulatively by wearers of the bionic suit.

And yet, in July, the company CEO in an interview with MD+DIbemoaned the fact that venture capitalists have decided to stay away from Ekso and hardware products, preferring instead to invest in health IT. That may have led the company to seek the public markets. Earlier in January, Ekso Bionics went public through a reverse merger and raised $20.6 million through a separate bridge debt transaction. Here is a video of a patient using the Ekso suit: